Information

For various reasons there are gaps in the Gloucester 500 project coverage of listed heritage. While most of central Gloucester is covered, there is listed heritage there not yet photographed. This heritage is nevertheless included on the relevant pages, if only with a link in the listings sidebar. There are two central areas that should really have their own pages but don't: lower Southgate Street and Brunswick Road/Park Road. Listed heritage at the bottom ends of both lower Southgate Street and Brunswick Road is included in the Gloucester Spa page. Listed heritage at the top end of Brunswick Road is included in the upper Eastgate Street page.

Lower Southgate Street

Lower Southgate Street extends from the site of the south gate at the end of the pedestrianised upper Southgate Street down to the junction with the inner ring road, where the Bristol and Stroud roads go their separate ways. It is today a main artery out of the city, busy with traffic it was never built to accommodate, and doubles at the bottom end as a car park.

It was one of the suburbs outside the city walls that was razed at the start of the siege of Gloucester, and the 15th-century lower wing of the Whitesmiths Arms is a rare survivor of this period. Between the end of the English Civil Wars and the beginning of the 19th century there was limited development just outside the site of the south gate.

The most significant building was an infirmary which opened in 1761 and which, after the introduction of the NHS in 1948 became the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. The hospital is one of only two listed buildings to be lost to planned redevelopment since 1972 when it was demolished in 1984 to make way for today's Southgate House. The hospital's neighbour closer to the site of the south gate was in the 19th century the Green Dragon Inn, and the lane that separated them was named Green Dragon Lane. Some time in the latter half of the 19th century, the infirmary was expanded by the addition of an eye institute built on the site of the Green Dragon, the entrance to the lane was shifted northwards and the lane renamed Parliament Street

Farther down, Southgate Street passed through the hamlet of Littleworth, a name which accurately represented the value of the few properties there until first Gloucester Spa and then the Docks prompted the development of the area into the suburb it is today.

Parker's Row and Park Road

Known today as Brunswick Road, Parker's Row first appears in the documentary record in 1455. It ran south from just outside the east gate, following the city wall down to the wall's south-east corner where it made junction with what was Green Dragon Lane, today's Parliament Street. In the early-19th century it was extended south as part of the development of Gloucester Spa, the southern end being a promenade named Spa Walk. The whole length from the top of lower Eastgate Street to Spa Road was renamed Brunswick Road in 1860.

Listed heritage at the top end of Brunswick Road comprises the Museum of Gloucester and the Library, both included in the upper Eastgate Street page. The listed heritage around the elegant, spa-inspired Brunswick Square is covered in the Gloucester Spa page. Between these, extending south from the junction with Parliament Street, are the four grade-II listed buildings of Ferncroft, Bastion House, and Nos. 28 and 30, all built c.1820.

The extension of Brunswick Road crossed the Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad, built 1811 to transport materiel from Gloucester Docks to Cheltenham. The arrival of the railways in the mid-19th century spelled the end of the horse-drawn tramroad, and the line east from Brunswick Road was converted to what we know today as Park Road. The first stretch to the junction with Montpellier was initially named St. James's Place, with houses built either side. Sandwiched between modern developments on the south side, the early-19th century St. James Place terrace of four properties survives from this time.

The rest of the road to what is today Trier Way was initially called Spa Road (not to be confused with today's Spa Road farther south) and passed through undeveloped land. In the latter half of the 19th century, the land south of this stretch of road became Gloucester Park while the land north was built up, which in 1871 included the grade-II listed Whitfield Memorial Presbyterian Church. At some stage the church lost the spire from its tower, and has in recent years been taken over by the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

Suburbs

The expansion of Gloucester in the 19th and 20th centuries accounts for approximately a quarter of Gloucester's listed heritage. Of these areas outside the medieval centre, Llanthony Secunda Priory, Kingsholm, London Road (including Hillfield House and Gardens), lower Eastgate Street, Gloucester Spa, the Docks, Barnwood and Hucclecote have been covered to varying degrees by the Gloucester 500 project.

The list of suburbs not yet visited in full or in some cases at all by the Gloucester 500 project begins with Barton, Tredworth, St. Paul's and Linden down to Tuffley Avenue, all subsumed into the city by the boundary expansion of 1874.

In 1900 Gloucester grew south and south-east, extending the city down to Podsmead and across what would later become the ring road of Eastern Avenue and Finlay Road to the foot of Robinswood Hill. This would ultimately add six more listed sites to Gloucester's tally. One would be the chapels of the cemetery at Tredworth. Two of them would be the new churches of St. Aldate on Finlay Road – which when consecrated in 1964 resurrected in name at least the historic and twice-demolished church of St. Aldate on St. Aldate Street between King's Square and Northgate Street – and St. Barnabas on the Stroud Road at its junction with Finlay Road.

Gloucester's boundary extension of 1935 brought Robinswood Hill, the historic source of the city's drinking water, within the city. With it came on the northern side of the hill the grade-II listed Well House and grade-II* listed Well Cross – both built in the 12th/13th century as part of the supply of water to the abbey in Gloucester – and five listed sites in Matson at the eastern foot of the hill. Four of the latter relate to the grade II* Matson House, built c.1575 and appropriated by King Charles I as the Royalist HQ during the siege of Gloucester in 1643. This expansion also brought the top end of Barnwood that lay within the outer ring road into the city.

Adjustments to the city boundary in 1951 transferred to the city Wotton Vill, an exclave of Gloucestershire within the city formed by the county administered Wotton Asylum, which became Horton Road Hospital on the establishment of the NHS in 1948. Three buildings associated with the hospital would subsequently be listed, the most notable of which is the hospital itself, a distinctive crescent built between 1814 and 1823, closed 1988 and converted to apartments 2005.

A major expansion in 1967 extended Gloucester west to the Severn, north to the A40 northern bypass and west to the M5 motorway. This brought the listed heritage of the rest of Barnwood and a large part of Hucclecote into the city. It also swallowed up twelve listed sites in the historic village of Hempsted. The largely greenfield development of Saintbridge preserved along the Painswick Road an early-17th century cottage and an 1835-vintage property, both of which became listed after becoming part of Gloucester. The Church of the Holy Trinity in Longlevens to the north and, in a resurrection of the Saxon dedication of St. Oswald's Priory, the Church of St. Oswald in Coney Hill to the west are both modern churches built in the 1930s to serve the new communities of those greenfield suburbs and, unusually for structures built after the mid-19th century, now part of Gloucester's listed heritage.

The last of Gloucester's 20th-century expansions in 1991 brought the thirteen listed sites of Quedgeley into the city. Seven of these are associated with the grade II*, 14th-century Church of St. James. The same boundary change also added the three listed sites of the 18th-century Winnycroft Farmhouse on the southern edge of Matson to Gloucester's tally of listed sites.